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February 16, 2015

Last week, the Whole Dog Journal issued the following as their "Tip of the Week" that I felt was very much worth sharing. Sorry for no direct link to the tip, but it's an email newsletter and I can't find it specifically online. But their sentences sum up a huge frustration over the media reporting of dog bite incidents and why experts in canine behavior are important resources vs just news sites or people without expertise.

"Without Provocation.

"Almost every "Dog Mauls Toddler" headline is followed by an article that includes, among other things, these two phrases:

"1.'The dog was always good with children' and

"2.'the bite was unprovoked".....

"With the very rare exception of idiopathic aggression -- aggression for which there is no discernible cause - every bite is provoked from the dog's perspective. We, as humans, may feel the bite wasn't justified or appropriate, but rest assured the dog felt justified in biting. In many cases the provocation is pretty apparent from the news article: the do was kept on a chain, the dog had a litter of puppies, the toddler was left outside in the back yard with a dog who had just been fed. In each case, the dog was stressed beyond his ability to control his bite.

"Raise your stress awareness. Examine news reports about dog attacks to see if you can identify possible stressors and provocation in each incident. Then be sure to protect your own dog from these potential bite-causing circumstances."

December 20, 2012

Breed-specific laws (and the ineffectiveness of them) are a common theme on this blog. I feel that all too often people read about an incident in the newspaper, and are quick to react with some type of legislation in response to the incident without taking the time to understand what it is that leads dogs to be aggressive in the first place. This is especially notable as most dogs never show aggression to their owners, or to others, and there are very few significant canine-related aggression issues each year in spite of there being roughly 72 million owned dogs in this country.

But even with the small numbers, dog aggression is a concern to some, and as I find reliable studies that address these issues, I try to post them because I always think more information is better than less information...which leads us to today's study: Factors Associated w/ Aggressiver Responses in Pet Dogs. (the entire study is at the link).

The study, like some similar studies, relied on the C-BARQ questionaire for people to report different factors in their dog's aggressive behavior. The study itself has some sample bias issues, as well as some issues that come with owners rating behavior via C-BARQ -- but the sample size is quite large (852 dog ownerss) and I think the results are interesting enough to share as they do add to the dogs/aggression data out there.

The dogs were rated on 3 different types of aggression: Stranger Directed Aggression, Owner Directed Aggression and dog-directed aggression. I'll get into a few of considerations, but first, I'll just list the factors that seemed to be important for the different types of aggression.

For all three types of aggression, the presence of physical punishment was seen as an important factor -- although dogs aged 5-10 were the primary ones impacted by this for Owner-Directed Aggression.

Breed was also a possible factor in all three types of aggression -- with Golden Retrievers scoring the lowest in all three segments and mixed breeds being the highest. The breeds ranked in order very differently from there depending on the type of aggression shown.

Owner Characteristics: These seemed to have little effect on the likelihood of the dogs to be more likely to show aggression. Owner's age, education, and experience with raising dogs did not have significant association with aggression. Male owners were less likely to score their dogs high on owner-directed aggression than female owners.

Living conditions: Dogs that lived in houses with yard space and more household members scored significantly higher on stranger-directed responses and dog-directed responses -- but not for owner-directed. Dogs in rural areas scored higher in stranger-directed aggression and dogs that lived in households with other dogs scored lower on owner-directed aggression.

Owner-dog interaction: As well as the physical punishment, dogs acquired as puppies scored higher on stranger-directed aggression than those adopted as adults. Dogs that spent more than 5 hours daily with their owners scored lower on owner-directed aggression. Dogs acquired for guarding purposes scored higher on stranger-directed aggression. Dogs that were kept outside of the house scored much higher on owner-directed aggression than ones that moved freely between inside and outside the home and ones that mostly lived inside the home.

Some of the study's commentary and observations:

There were a lot of similarities between enviornmental factors in stranger-directed aggression and dog-directed aggression.

Dogs being kept outside having a stronger tendency toward aggression toward owners but not toward strangers may be the result of agressive dogs being "banished" outside, or because dogs kept outside my have lower owner involvement and thus correlate with this aggression.

Dogs living in rural areas and houses with yard space may be moe aggressive toward strangers because owners are more tolerant, or even encourage, these aggressive behaviors for protection -- even when guarding is not a primary reason for acquiring the dogs. Dog with houses with yard space are more frequently exposed to unfamiliar people and dogs walking by the property -- elicting the dog's territorial response.

The study data could be skewed because owners elected to fill out the survey. This self-selected group may be more homogenous than a random subset -- thus, there is likely a lower degree of variation thanif a random sample had been used.

The study does not attempt to show causal relationships between dog-aggression and environmental factors, but only to show relationshps that may lend support for the possibility of reducing aggressive behavior through proper owner management.

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I don't know that there is anything revolutionary in this study. In part, because of the inability to completely determine causal factors, but also because even with strong correlation, people who know and understand canine behavior know that behavior is made up of a complex group of circumstances. Breed, Breeding (even within breeds), environment, how animals are cared for, how they are raised, trained, punished, rewarded, spay/neuter status, when they are removed from their litters, etc all play roles in canine behavior. Because of this complexity, it is difficult to determine causal factors because it is nearly impossible to isolate all of the other factors from each other.

However, as science continues to add to the knowledge base of this field, it is increasingly ridiculous for legislation to be passed that focuses solely on a small factor that may or may not have a causal part in aggression.

It's important for cities to focus on what science and experts say about canine behavior -- and focus legislation on the BEHAVIOR of an animal, vs what it looks like. It really is the only solution..

The investigation included enlisting Jeff Schettler from the Georgia K9 Training Center. Schettler wears a dog bite protection suit, and then acts as an intruder going into people's homes while the owners are not present and films the reactions of the dogs. The story also interviews respective dog owners to see how they think their dog will behave.

Schettler enters into the homes of many different types of dogs: a couple of Border Collies, a Brittany Spaniel, a pit bull, a German Shepherd, a Rottwieler and a couple of Lab mixes.

The end result is that most of them are pretty lousy guardians. Most try to befriend the intruder. One dog even gets stolen by Schettler. The 'pit bull' tries to make friends while his lab mix companions bark at Schettler and even does tricks for Schettler to try to win favor. Only the German Shepherd really puts up any resistence, and that is mostly out of fear.

I think the report does a good job of noting that dogs without specific breeding/training to be guard dogs are not much good at it -- and also of noting that most people are best served by not trying to have guard dogs because they are not terribly good at determining friend or foe.

Overall, it's a pretty interesting (and at times funny) report and worth the time to watch.

The interview with Dunbar is interesting, as most interviews with him are. And though I confess that I, like Marji, found his take on adult dogs a little disconcerting, there was one area of the interview that I thought was very interesting.

Ian Dunbar: The question is not "Is the dog reactive?" Most dogs, like most people, are reactive.

The question is "When it reacts, does it cause damage?"

If it causes damage you're pretty much screwed. It means the dog did not develop bite inhibition in puppyhood. And there's no way to teach dog bite inhibtion safely. There's no way to teach the dog bite inhibition toward dogs and other animals at all.

There ain't no cure. The only think you can do is manage it, keep him indoors and never let him off leash. Or euthanize him. I grade bites on a scale from one to six and once you move from a three to a four, there's nothing you can do for this dog. He's going to die.

Forbes: What exactly do you mean by bite inhibition?

ID: The importance of puppy class is that puppies bite other puppies in play and they learn that their bites hurt because they have needle sharp teeth. So they learn to inhibit the force of their bites before they develop strong jaws. If they don't learn that, the dog is screwed. There's no magic here.....

Forbes: So it's all about the intensity of the dog's bite?

ID: It's the good news and bad news about bites. It's bad that it happens, because the dog is upset and stressed and lacks confidence and it felt the need to bite. That's bad. But the good news is it didn't hurt. That's bite inhibition.

Forbes: Most people don't want any part of a dog that bites.

ID: When I met Ashby, I fed him some food. He took the food and he bit me.

When I met Claude he was going to be euthanized the next day because he had bitten someone at the San Francisco SPCA. I looked at the woman's arm and there wasn't any damage at all. So I went in to see him and started pushing his buttons, which was pretty easy. Touch his collar, you get bitten. Touch his butt, you get bitten.

He bit me fourt times. I said "Great, we'll take him." Why? The bites don't hurt. We have a dog who's scared and reactive, but he's safe. And he's proven safe. Four times he's gone off and hasn't caused any damage.

Forbes: But most people don't even consider these distinctions.

ID: Bite inhibition is the most misunderstood concept in dog training.

Think of a human analogy: Let's say you go into a biker bar and you insult a guy's motorcycle. You can have two kinds of reactions. One can be "You'd better not say that again." That's cool. The other one is he pulls a knife and stabs you.

In shelters, I'm convinced they kill all the wrong dogs, and adopt out dogs that aren't tested. If the dog snaps, they'll euthanize it. I think -- he snaps, thank goodness he's only snapping.

I realize that shelters are often challenged in these situations. It is obviously not a good idea to send aggressive dogs into adopting homes. But do we properly make the distinction between reactive and dangerous? And are shelters mistakenly euthanizing dogs that are reactive, but safe? I'm not sure. Would love to get your thoughts.

December 17, 2011

Below, is a video featuring a representative from a humane society in Washington who was called out to deal with an aggressive dog on its chain.

The video shows the dog being VERY territorial and lunging at the humane society person.

Eventually, the dog is contained -- and the video then shows the rapid transformation of the dog going from biting/lunging to cuddling in less than 24 hours --- based almost entirely on how he was contained.

The video then gives statistics on chaining and dog bites and how chained dogs are more likely to be involved in bite incidents than unchained dogs.

The video is an interesting look at tethering as a sole form of containment for dogs and while I am not opposed to the idea of tethering dogs, the idea of tethering dogs as their sole or primary form of containment is very problematic. It also is very telling as to why you cannot judge the actions of dogs without judging the actions of the people surrounding them that created their circumstances.

November 09, 2011

Last week, there was a story that was written about a new research study that details the different environmental impacts on behavior for dogs on walks. The study claims to be the most comprehensive study ever done on this topic.

Before I dive into a few of the details from the study, I want to note that my comments about the study are based solely on the news article, as I've been unable to find an actual copy of the study online anywhere -- so my opinions of it may change if I can ever get a full copy (which should be available at some point since it has been accepted for publication in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science).

The study was performed by Petr Rezac, an associate professior in the Department of Animal Morphology, Physiology and Genetics at Mendel University in the Czech Republic. The study is based on the observations of nearly 2,000 dog-dog interactions on owner-led walks in the Czech Republic. Only single dogs/single owner interactions were measured. No dogs with two owners present, incidents with multiple dogs with one owner or dogs with no owners were included in the study.

But based on the news article, I don't think most experienced dog owners will be very surprised by most of the key findings.

Among those findings:

1) Dogs being walked by men are four times more likely to threaten or bite other dogs (this was actually the factor that caused the biggest effect on whether or a dog would act aggressively). Interestingly, this held true for both leashed and unleashed dogs.

2) Dogs on a leash are twice as likely to act aggressively toward another dog than dogs off the leash. Dogs most often showed aggression if both dogs were on a leash (21%), followed by on leash toward off-leash (19%) and then off-leash toward on-leash (17%). Both dogs being off-leash was much lower than when a leash was involved at 8%. It's worth noting however, that off-leash dogs were twice as likely (7%) to bit an on-leash dog than any other scenerio. On-leash biting on-leash came in at 3.3%. These percentages don't involve incidents involving puppies where no bites were witnessed.

3) Male and female dogs both prefer to play with members of the opposite gender -- although females are more likely to be playeful than males. Puppies are 11x more likely than older dogs to prefer to play.

4) Dogs of the same gender were 3x more likley to show a threat and 5x more likely to bite than dogs of opposite genders. In incidents involving adult dogs, 21% of male dog vs male dog greetings involved a threat, 4.5% involved a bite. Female dogs meeting female dogs had 24% lead to threats and 7.7% to bites. Meetings between opposite genders resulted in about 8% having threats and less than 1% in bites.

5) Biting occured in 3% of all interactions. Only 1 in 13 of those was NOT preceded by a threat. Threats were seen in roughly 17% of dog/dog interactions. All of the bites were mild bites.

6) The most common interaction to involve a threat is a senior dog toward a puppy, followed by a senior dog toward an adult dog, then, adult dog toward puppy. However, the most common type of bite came from seniors toward adults and adults toward seniors. There were zero incidents of puppies biting.

7) While dogs were most likely to play with dogs of the same size as them, biting incidents happend most often happened between dogs of similar sizes.

Again, none of these findings should shock most readers of this blog. Leash aggression is a fairly common problem among all types of dogs and the social aspects of size, gender and age are pretty common.

It is also interesting that sniffing was the most popularly shown interactive behavior. This isn't a surprise of course, but since it was shown in 75% of all cases, it is speculated that the inability to properly sniff among leashed dogs may actually lead to some of the aggressive behaviors.

I think the handler of the dog is is interesting -- because it is hard to determine whether the dog is feeding off of the handler's body languange or if, by chance, the handler in these cases reflects the primary trainer of the dog and may reflect different overally training styles of men vs women (also, I don't have a good feel for the demeanor of Czech men, that may be culturally different than in the U.S.).

Interestingly 37% of the dogs in the study were walked by men, where 63% were walked by women. Men also walked male and large dogs more often than women. Women most often walked small dogs. It's worth noting here that small dogs tended to show aggression more often than their larger counterparts, so this makes the male/female data very interesting.

There are often conversations here about the differences in nature vs nurture in the behavior of animals - -but clearly nurture plays a pretty important role in overall behavior when the gender of the owner and the act of whether or not a dog is on a leash can play an instrumental role in a dog's behavior -- because those are very short term, environmental conditions.

It's also important to note that the vast majority of dog-dog interactions did not resulted in play, and most did not result in threats. Only a small percent ended in bites (although it really was a larger number than I would have expected).

If I'm able to get a copy of the study I'll post more --but I definitely think the study is interesting, even if the results aren't aren't necessarily shocking.

August 30, 2011

There is a new study that was just published in the August issue of Veterinary Record.

The Italian study compared the owner-reported behaviors of 70 dogs that were separated from their litters at 30-40 days with the owner-reported behaviors of 70 dogs that were separated from their liters at 2 months, and studied whether behavioral issues arose from dogs being separated from their litters at the younger age.

Based on the study's results, here are the percentage of dogs in the study that developed the specific behavioral problem for each group - the first number respresents those dogs that were separated from their owners early, the second number those that were separated later.

Destructiveness: 47/16

Excessive Barking: 63/21

Fearfulness on walks: 53/7

Reactivity to noises: 81/39

Toy possessiveness: 34/4

Food possessiveness: 34/7

Attention-seeking: 87/49

Aversion to strangers: 60/24

Stranger aggression: 23/4

Owner aggression: 17/9

Play biting: 28/3

Tail chasing: 14/1

House Soiling: 26/10

Specific definitions of each of these is included in the study.

There is a further analysis in the study -- a large part of which shows that dogs that are bought from pet stores have significantly greater issues than dogs that were obtained from other sources.

From the discussion:

"The results of the present study indicate that early separation of a puppy from the litter is an experience that may increase the animal's chances of showing potentially problematic behaviors as an adult. Moreover, the effect can be further potentiated by the puppy's first environment"

There are certainly a few other factors that could have influenced the study. First off, there were only 70 dogs in each group - -so a pretty small sample size. Secondly, there was a significant difference in breeds of dogs involved (67% of the dogs that were not separated from their litters until 2 months were purebred dogs while 100% of the dogs in the early separation group were mixed-breed dogs). The study didn't not attempt to take into account owner-behavior either.

However, the study is still worth examining -- in large part because nothing in the study is consistent with what you would hear from most professional breeders, behaviorists, and previous studies on the topic.

The study does show a very strong correlation (likely causal) between aggressive-types behaviors like stranger aggression, owner aggression, and possession aggression and dogs being removed from their litters at 30-40 days. The study also suggests that there are several fearfulness behaviors (fearfulness on walks, possession aggression, aversion to strangers) that may result from a lack of confidence that would be garnered by extending the time with their litters. The differences in all of these behaviors is very significant between the early separation group and the not-early separation group.

This shouldn't be a surprise to most people -- but does highlight that there could be some other significant issues that lead to aggressive behavior that doesn't show up on anyone's dog bite 'statistics'. In addition to increased aggressive behavior, it is also worth noting that removal from a litter too early (in this case before 16 weeks) has also been shown to decrease bite inhibition -- which is a major determinent between a dog that issues a "bite" and a full on "attack".

It is also likely very telling that dogs that were removed from litters early had a better chance of good behavior if the dog was not immediately put into a non-home environment in a pet shop. It seems clear that removing the dog from a its litter, where it would receive natural socialization, to another situation where it would receive less socialization enhances the problems (the study calls this an epigenetic impact -- which we've also discussed on this blog). This would logically suggest that the same impact would be had on dogs removed from their litters and put on chains full time.

According to the study:

"In consclusion, early separation from the dam and littermates, especially when combined with housing in a pet shop, might affect the capacity of a puppy to adapt to new environmental conditions and social relationships later in life."

If we are going to have serious conversations about canine aggression, it is imperative that we drop the discussion of "breeds" being the problem, and start listening to science and experts. Science has repeated told us that breed is not a significant differentiator in aggressive behavior, and that environmental factors, such as early removal from litters and early upbringing have a much more dramatic impact.

If we were to focus on these environmental factors, which is substantiated by science as being a factor, instead of focsusing on 'breed' (which visual identification studies have shown us is unreliable), we would have a much greater impact on solving the dog bite issues in this country. The time to start is yesterday.

July 26, 2011

Dusty is a red 'pit bull' type dog that was given a behavioral evaluation by Dr. Katherine Houpt. I've embedded the four minute long evaluation:

As you watch the video you'll note tht the dog happily walked in the evaluation room with the animal control officer with the lead. Then, when being stroked by the (clearly) fake hand, the dog shows clear play signals with the hand. The dog showed no aggression when the food bowl was placed in front of it and removed multiple times, and play bowed to the fake doll (and upon the doll's continued approach showed signals of avoidance). The dog jumped up on the stranger at first, but not in an aggressive manner. In a separate video, you can see the excitement with which Dusty met another dog (keeping in mind that this is a high-stimulous environment as you can clearly hear a lot of dog barking in the background.

Dr. Houpt declared Dusty aggressive and recommended killing Dusty because of his "lack of any useful purpose and public safety threat (he) poses". Threat? The dog in the video? Really?

This sure seems like an effort by someone to have the dog killed because of, possibly, perceptions based on the type of dog she is vs any actual behavioral issues.

I've talked about Temp Testing in shelters before -- and strongly believe that too many shelters are using bogus temp testing to declare too many animals "unadoptable" and killing them in the shelter. But in declaring them "unadoptable", don't count them against their kill numbers -- and there are no shortage of shelters out there that are declaring 25-30% of all of their impounds "unadopatable".

There is no rational person who would view the video above and think Dusty poses a threat. She may need to develop better manners, but threatening?

And if your shelter has a similar policy on temp testing please stop it now. Temp testing should largely be designed to give behaviorists an idea of what type of training/situations the dog needs help with to make it adoptable. In some rare situations, dogs will be too aggressive to be safely rehomed, but this will be the exception, not the norm. For the most part, temp testing should be designed to show the dog's training needs so people can work with the dog on those needs. Temp testing should not be treated as a pass/fail concept where any dog that "fails" is killed....and certainly dogs that show the behavior of the dog in the video above should not be "failed" and certainly not "killed".

It is a shame when the shelter system fails the dogs it was created to save. So please voice your support for Dusty...and stop Dusty, and dogs like her, from being needlessly killed in shelters.

Updated:

Here is a link to the backstory behind the dogs in question, who were "rescued" from an alleged dog fighting ring only to be unjustly sentenced to death by their "rescuers" - -the backstory is from the Buster Foundation.

Bad Rap discusses behavior evaluations at their best, and at their worst - -and some good thoughts on how dogs from these situations SHOULD be judged on their evaluations.

The Monroe Daily news has now picked up the story -- unfortnately, without the video footage, it is simply a he said/she said situation. The video really is the damning evidence here.

March 01, 2010

The story of Brittaney and Rambo took another interesting turn last week -- marking yet another turn on what is becoming an expensive embarrassment for the city for Brampton.

You can read the back links for more details, but essentially Brittaney and Rambo -- two dogs from the same litter (Brittaney's picture is on the left, Rambo is the larger dog on the right -- with a 2nd picture below) were confiscated from their owners back in Janauary because the city believed that both dogs, who belonged to different owners, were 'pit bulls' -- a type of dog that is banned under the Ontario Dog Owner Liability Act.

The owners claim that neither dog is a 'pit bull', and in fact, their mother is known to be a Boxer (she is pictured below-- in a previous post I had mistakenly identified the mother as Rambo -- I appologize for the error). While the

Throughout the entire process, it seems as if the city (and the Ontario Dog Owner Liability Act) have failed to ask the most logical question in this case: Are the dogs aggressive? By all reports, the dogs are well-behaved, docile dogs -- but now, the taxpayers of Brampton are footing the bill for full page ad in the newspaper, and now the costs of a lawyer, so the city can get the "ok" to kill two dogs that are not aggressive.

Does this make any sense to anyone? (It certainly doesn't make sense to LassieGetHelp or BrindleStick). At this point, if you are any type of taxpaying citizen in Brampton, call your city adminstrators and tell them to quit wasting your tax dollars.

Meanwhile, in Halifax, a dog named Brindi is on death row stemming from an incident where she got in a skirmish with another dog. By all reports, the other dog received no more that some minor scratches from the incident, but the city council in Halifx has decided to put the Brindi on death row. Brindi has 9 days left to live and they are doing a countdown for him over at MyLetsAdopt (all posts are done twice, once in French and once in English).

I'm no fan of forgiving severe dog aggression -- but anyone who has spent any time around dogs knows that skirmishes do happen from time to time. When they do, they most often end in only minor injuries for either dog. Skirmishes between dogs are NOT a reason to kill a dog for being aggressive. Insist that the owner take the dog to training -- but we seem to be way to trigger-happy on this continent to kill dogs for minor skirmishes (because we can't tell the difference between that and true aggression) and because of the way dogs look.

It's not that hard folks to tell dogs that really are aggressive a potential threat to society. And neither of these Canadian cities are able to do so. And it's a shame.

I feel for Brindi's owners - -who are launching a full-on campaign to save Brendi's life. I know they would appreciate the support and any letters you can send to the folks in Halifax.

November 06, 2009

I usually try to add this as part of the weekly roundup, but there have been some great posts from around the internet the past 10 days or so and I just really want to put them out there for some excellent reading. I really do encourage you to click through -- some great stuff out there.

Sam theDog Trainer has a very good new article on some of the causes for dogs biting young children. The keys are supervision children and dogs, providing proper training and exercise for your dog, and not creating a stressful environment for your dog.

Great news from Austin Pets Alive -- the Austin city council unanimously passed the resolution to make the necessary steps to make Austin a no-kill city. Here's a link to the shelter recommendations on how they plan to achieve no kill.

The folks at Animal Ark Foundation in Minneapolis have a great You Tube video they put together on how the animal welfare industry lost their way -- based on the book Redemption. It's very much worth watching -- it's 20 minutes long but goes very quickly.

Fred at One Bark at a Time has a really great article about dog bites. The reality is that most dog bites happen for a reason -- and it is usually caused by something the human did wrong. The more we understand dog behavior, the more we can properly assess whether a biting dog is truly aggressive or not. Fred shares a couple of personal stories that provide great examples for discussion. I'm a fan of Fred's writing (and photography), but I think his telling of personal stories like this are him at his best.

Christie had a great article in the San Franscisco Chronicle about why dog advocates aren't moving on when it comes to Michael Vick's unpaid dues. Vick's actions went far beyond dog fighting and into nearly unspeakable animal cruelty...for which Vick has never shown even the slightest bit of remorse.

This one is seemingly a bit random, but this is an article by John Stossel one what he feels like is a double-standard that journalists seem to have about bias. When Stossel first started as a journalist, he mostly reported about companies that were trying to screw over consumers (he has some interesting thoughts on this), and when he was doing it, other journalist liked him. But now that he has turned his focus onto the government and media and its constant fear mongering. I think it's a pretty good read following my series on the Science of Fear a few weeks ago. For what it's worth, I did a write-up about Stossel's Series: Fear Mongering in America back in 2007 - -you can read those installments here, here, here and here.

PBRC has launched a new blog called Pitter Patter. The site is mostly really cute pictures of 'pit bulls' in really funny moments and with funny headlines. Think of it as the LOLcats for 'pit bulls'. Nearly guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.